Our conservatories have
offered very different end-of-year shows. I was quite keen to see the Guildhall’s
Owen Wingrave, not least since I have
never seen the opera, and wanted to know whether it was quite as bad, Gloriana-bad, as (almost) everyone says
it is. Alas, the diary did not permit. The Royal Academy, however, offered a
splendid double-bill of Dido and Aeneas and The Lighthouse. For something
entirely different, the Royal College put on Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne, in an ‘English version by Alistair Beaton, by
arrangement with D’Oyly Carte Opera Trust Ltd’. My heart sank a little at the
mention of D’Oyly Carte, fearing that we might be in for something akin to the
dread Gilbert and Sullivan. (I should almost
rather hear Donizetti!) However, Beaton’s version proved relatively resistant
to such temptation; more to the point, the performers ensured a duly sparkling
performance. Offenbach might not be musical champagne, but an unpretentious
prosecco – chilled, if admittedly devoid of much in the way of flavour, let
alone complexity – will sometimes do better than an overpriced version of the ‘real
thing’. (Not that my mind might yet again be wandering back towards the tedium
of Gloriana...!)

The tradition of giving
Offenbach’s opéras bouffes in English
is venerable, extending back to the 1872 British premiere at the Holborn
Theatre, again in an adaptation. There was even a film version made, in both
French and English, in 1936. Without feeling especially strongly about the
matter, I slightly missed the sound of the French language; however, I suspect
that, given a cast of young, mostly Anglophone singers, the immediacy gained,
not least in the spoken sections, was compensation enough. (The preponderance
of dialogue reflects the work’s origins as a piece for the Palais-Royal, as
opposed to Offenbach’s accustomed, so-aptly-named Théâtre de la Gaîté.) There
is, after all, nothing to prevent one from travelling for a little of the vie parisienne oneself. Beaton made a
virtue out of translation by having the original Swedish noble couple, the
Baron and Baroness de Gondremarck, become Lord and Lady Ellington, thereby
permitting jokes about the English abroad, their views of ‘foreigners’, and so
forth. Offenbach had already reduced the
original five acts to four; here we saw a three-act version, which, if
occasionally it lost something in terms of motivation, ensured that the piece
did not outstay its warm welcome.

Every element of Jo Davies’s
production was a joy. It did not seek depth or impose it where there was none –
though that can on occasion work – but concentrated on sharp direction of the
performers against a backdrop of views, or suggested, views of Paris. Bo Bailey’s
designs, from what seemed to be the Gare d’Orsay of the first act, to the
Moulin Rouge and Eiffel Tower of the last. Kay Shepherd’s choreography
contributed greatly to the tightness of overall effect, whilst the coordination
between stage direction and choral singing – a crack team, this! – really had
to be seen and heard to be believed. The chorus not only sang, as my companion
remarked, as if with one voice; it moved and danced with one, too – except, of
course, when everyone had to be doing his own thing, in which case that was
equally well accomplished.

Michael Rosewell seemed in
his element conducting the excellent RCM Opera Orchestra. The last thing one
would want here is even a shred of sentimentality; there was none to be
discerned. Rather, the tightness of ensemble on stage was mirrored, doubtless
to a good extent engendered, by that in the pit. Peter Kirk made an affecting,
but not too affecting, Gardefeu; one believed just enough that he might have
something equating to love for Métella, but equally well in his dandyism. (The
costumes certainly helped!) Hannah Sandison’s character was less well-formed as
Métella, but she did not come well out of the rehashing of the work; Sandison
certainly sang well enough though. Rosemary Braddy and Morgan Pearse both shone
in their different ways as the English noble couple: the former dignified and
lovely of voice, the latter not only impressive in his baritone but adept at
the comic timing of sending himself up. Filipa van Eck increasingly stole the
show as the glovemaker, Gabrielle, whether in her assumed guise as Austrian
military widow – cue a good number of Alpine jokes – or as the naval wife of
Bobinet’s assumed admiralty (another fine performance, by Luke D Williams). Van
Eck’s vocal performance was equally impressive: definitely one to watch. Vasili
Karpiak proved a scene-stealing Brazilian – outrageous in every sense. But
there were no weak links, and the ensemble really was the thing. It will soon
be time for me to return to Wagner, in London (at the Proms), Seattle, and
Salzburg; Offenbach proved quite an amuse-gueule.

In typically imaginative style, the Aurora Orchestra prefaced its performances of
Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll and
Beethoven’s Septet with introductory monologues, sometimes shading into
dialogue, sometimes tellingly at cross-purposes, between Richard and Cosima
Wagner. Barry Millington ensured their historical accuracy, though I could not
help wondering whether that preceding the Siegfried-Idyll
was a little on the lengthy side. There was, of course, a great deal of
information to impart: how they met, the progress of their relationship, and
the events of that first, Tribschen staircase performance. Moreover, I suspect
that those less well-versed in Wagner biography would have welcomed the
opportunity to set the work in context. One theme that certainly shone through,
as it does from even the most cursory glance at Cosima’s Diaries, was the
crucial aspect of nineteenth-century gender relations, taken, as it were, to
the extreme by Cosima’s extraordinary marriage of self-abnegation and sheer
stubbornness. Henry Goodman summoned up a degree of Wagner’s protean nature,
though the assumption too often shaded into mere arrogance; as so often, the
charisma to which Wagner’s friends and acquaintances attested was less
apparent. Harriet Walter penetrated more deeply – perhaps, ultimately, it is a
more achievable task? – into the strengths and, in modern terms, ‘passive-aggressive’
contradictions of Cosima.

Nicholas
Collon conducted the excellent Aurora players in the Siegfried-Idyll. Their soloistic skill combined with the Hall One
acoustic to permit an uncommon degree of clarity, so much so that the birdsong
seemed to point to Mahler, and even beyond, to Webern’s pointillism. Earlier
on, there were a few occasions when I thought Collon might have yielded more,
but the performance grew more flexible through its course. If anything, there
was perhaps a little indulgence at the end, though it was readily forgivable.
If it seems invidious to single any player out, I shall still do so, mentioning
Oliver Coates’s especially sensitive turning of the crucial cello line; one
might almost have listened to it in itself. Taken as a whole, this fine performance
granted us the opportunity to hear that in one far from negligible sense,
Cosima was right to view herself as the most fortunate of women, for who else
has received a birthday present such as this?

Beethoven’s
glorious Septet was played as true chamber music, Collon wisely leaving the
players to themselves. In every movement the very particular marriage – not only
Richard and Cosima deserve that epithet – of Mozartian serenade style with
thematic working born of Haydn shone through, as sunny as the music itself. (Mozart’s
wont was always to impart greater sadness, implied or otherwise.) Whatever
tempi were settled on were made to work, and never, even when swift, to turn
brittle, such was the sense of life in performance. The quiet dignity of the Adagio, for instance, contrasted
tellingly with the swing of the following Minuet: so tricky to capture, yet
effortlessly, or seemingly effortlessly, achieved on this occasion. Haydn’s
influence certainly pervaded the fourth movement variations; I thought in
particular of his late F minor/major set for piano. Above all, there was joy,
which was just as it should have been.

If
Leipzig’s staging of Die Feen
remains my highlight so far of Wagner’s anniversary year, this recital, on its
smaller, relatively unassuming, scale probably comes next. Wagner’s songs play
an interesting part in his output. Little heard, they are rarely
characteristic, at least given the Wagner we generally hear – and of course,
excluding the mature Wesendonck-Lieder.
(Matters seem a little different, though not entirely so, when we admit, as we
should, Wagner’s first three operas into the canon.) Yet, if most would be hard
put to guess the composer, the songs not only show gifted assumption of various
styles, as suggested in his early prose writings on German, French, and Italian
music; they are well worth hearing in their own right.

Janice
Watson and Joseph Middleton certainly proved excellent advocates for this
music. Bar very occasional strain on a high note and a few confusions with the
words, Watson’s engaged and engaging performances will surely have won a good few
converts. Command of line was impeccable throughout, as was diction. One never
had the sense that a favour was somehow being done to ‘obscure’ repertoire; the
songs were treated with the care, dignity, and understanding that they deserve.
Likewise Middleton’s accounts of the piano parts. Hovering, as does Wagner,
between the pianistic – Wagner was never much of a pianist himself – and the
orchestral, Middleton’s animated performances offered great harmonic and
stylistic understanding, as well as unfailing support for the singer.

'Gretchen am Spinnrade',
the sixth of Wagner’s op.5 Goethe Faust-Lieder (1831), may never dislodge
Schubert from our affections, but it comes surprisingly close to him in tone
and indeed in assuredness. The 'Melodram',
last in that set, peers some way into the future. Neither its Weltschmerz nor
its harmonic language would seem out of place in The Flying Dutchman. Die Feen is perhaps closer
still; indeed, given a period of immersion in Wagner’s first opera, I was
struck by a recurrent phrase, which he would reuse, consciously or otherwise,
on that occasion. Middleton’s structured tone painting was splendidly complemented
by Watson’s spoken delivery of the text. Wagner, we were reminded, was most
definitely a ‘German’ composer stylistically, before what we think of as
his ‘early’ experiments with more Italianate and French styles. Not for nothing
had Der Freischütz
made such an impression on him as a boy. The Georg Scheuerlin setting, Der Tannenbaum,
from 1838, sounds more mature still: a wonderfully dark evocation of death
foretold. As the fir-tree explains to the boy, it feels bitter when thinking of
him, since the axe would soon fall upon it, to furnish the wood for the boy’s
coffin: ‘Daß schon die Axt mich suchet zu deinem Totenschrein, das macht mich
stets so trübe, gedenk’ ich, Knabe dein.’ One might almost think a version of
Siegfried, with more of a consciousness than his successor would attain, was
already beginning to receive his forest education.

The
French songs would surely only have been recognised as the work of the same
composer by someone who knew. They show an almost disturbing ability to assume
not only a very different style from the Lieder, but even from each other.
If Berlioz’s mélodiesare perhaps the most abiding presence, especially in the delightful Tous n’est qu’images fugitivesandMignonne,
then it is rather Meyerbeer who comes to the fore in the well-nigh scena-like Adieux de Marie Stuart.
Watson’s deft handling of the coloratura was complemented by Middleton’s
well-attuned ear for the moment when the piano should really turn operatic. La tombe dit à la rose
is an oddity, in that the piano part is almost entirely absent. It might have
been interesting to hear an attempt at realisation, but one can understand the
desire simply to present what Wagner wrote; certainly his melodic gift,
whatever contemporaries might have said (on which, see David Trippett’s excellent new book, Wagner’s Melodies), did not desert
him on this or indeed any other occasion.

The
Wesendonck-Lieder
are of course familiar territory. Both performers clearly relished the
opportunity now to present Wagner fully-formed, if still in (relative!) bagatelle-like
mode. Watson’s command of idiom was as impressive as her at times quite
extraordinary vocal shading, finely matched in the piano part. If, at first, I
wondered whether ‘Im Treibhaus’ was being taken a little too swiftly, I was
entirely won over by an account which, though it did not shun Wagner’s Tristan intimations,
recognised quite properly that this was a song in its own right. Middleton
ensured that there was no reason whatsoever to lament the lack of an orchestra,
whether Wagner’s, Felix Mottl’s, or Henze’s enchanting chamber scoring.

Schumann’s
Liederkreis,
op.24, nevertheless reminded one of the difference between a great composer who
wrote some wonderful songs and a great composer of Lieder (amongst other
things). The ease of song-writing, the complex psychology of those miraculous
piano parts, was given full opportunity for expression; the disturbing
inevitability of ‘Mit Myrten und Rosen’ brought a tear or two to my eye. Liszt
may not have been primarily a song-composer, and unsurprisingly proved more
experimental in that field than Schumann, but the examples of his art we heard
also served to remind us of the appalling neglect he continues to suffer. The ‘gypsy’
music of the Lenau setting, Die drei
Zigeuner; the proto-impressionism of Ihr Glocken von Marling; the keenness and
intelligence of response to Heine in Im Rhein, im schönen Strome: all was powerfully
conveyed. Watson showed herself just as much at ease with the vocal line as
Middleton with the gorgeous piano parts, a treat for any pianist with the
requisite technique and stylistic command. It is probably Liszt who deserves another
anniversary, since there remains so much of his music known only to
specialists, if at all. It seemed meet and right, then, that the encore should
be a loving account of Über
allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.

Wagner
200 continues throughout the year. There are two further concerts
this week alone; I shall be reporting back from the Aurora Orchestra’s Wagner
and Beethoven concert. I have also, doubtless unwisely, agreed to participate
in a debate in October on an issue about which more nonsense is spoken than any
other, namely, Wagner and the
Jews.

It was a delight to welcome
back Erich Höbarth and Susan Tomes to the Wigmore Hall, following an earlier all-Mozart recital last September. For just a few opening bars of the D major sonata, KV
306/300l, I was unsure about the
balance, Höbarth’s violin sounding a little too forward, but soon all was well.
Höbarth offered nicely modulated tone, born in part of intelligently varied
vibrato; Tomes’s piano part was clean, clear, equally pleasing in its attentive
though not fussy shading. This first movement proved predominantly sunny, the
stormy contrast of the development section well judged. Warm lyricism from both
players characterised the slow movement. Conversational rhetoric made its delightful
points, without detracting from overall structure. Again, the fine degrees of
shading from both Höbarth and Tomes impressed: not for its own sake, but for
the insight showed into Mozart’s music. Such qualities were equally apparent in
the finale. The tricky alternating metres were successfully navigated, not
least in a witty account of the cadenza. The first movement of the F major
sonata, KV 376/374d, showed itself by
turn radiantly lyrical and sensitively sinuous. Poised throughout, it was
nevertheless alert to the music’s sterner moments. The sophistication of Mozart’s
melodic and harmonic construction – when does one idea end and another begin? –
was perceptively and lovingly communicated in the Andante. Mozart’s abundant melodic genius was once again hymned in
the finale. Harmonic understanding was equally apparent, whether with a broader
brush or in the subtlety of the moment.

The second half opened with
the G minor Variations on ‘Hélas, j’ai perdu mon amant’. Mozart’s dignified
sadness in this tonality was readily apparent, as was a fine sense of give and
take, rubato included, between pianist and violinist. The performance
culminated in a dramatically vehement sixth variation. Why do we almost never
hear this wonderful music? Tomes then had the stage to herself for the B-flat
major Piano Sonata, KV 570. Her first movement upheld the balance between
Bachian counterpoint and sinuous melodic chromaticism. Voicing was clear, and
there was ample sense of formal dynamism. Above all, the deceptive ‘simplicity’
of this sonata and of late Mozart more generally was granted a voice. I
initially cavilled at the swift tempo for the slow movement; it is, after all,
marked Adagio. Yet it was made to
work in unassuming fashion. There is greater profundity to be found here, not least
of the searingly Romantic variety, but this was certainly preferable to
striving after meretricious ‘effect’. Some decoration was applied, all
eminently reasonable, though that did not prevent a seemingly irritated and
unquestionably irritating man in front of me from shaking his head whenever it
occurred. Tomes surely navigated the treacherous demands of the finale; even
its opening phrase is enough to have one throw one’s hands in the air and say
that it is unperformable. Crucial to her achievement was the ability to place
notes, both in themselves and in relation to one another: there is, as ever in
Mozart, nowhere to hide. Mozart’s marriage of learned counterpoint and extreme
chromaticism once again worked its eternal marriage; we did not sound so very
far from the well-nigh Schoenbergian Gigue, KV 574, as indeed we are not,
whether musically or chronologically. Again, decoration was tastefully
employed.

Höbarth returned for the
E-flat Violin Sonata, KV 481. Difference in scale from the earlier works for
piano and violin immediately registered. Here was a grander canvas, upon which,
most creditably, Mozart’s music was granted plenty of space to breathe, the
Fuxian ‘Jupiter’ tag from the first movement’s development section making clear
the composer’s seriousness of purpose. I could not help but wonder whether the
drama of that movement as a whole might have been projected a little more
strongly, but it remained an eminently musical performance. Again, a grander
scale was apparent in the slow movement, though certainly not at the cost of
more intimate moments. There was, quite rightly, a strong sense of the operatic
aria to the performance, especially from Höbarth, but there also remained a complexity
that was inescapably ‘instrumental’ in thought as well as deed. I again missed
on occasion a stronger sense of drama in the finale, but it received a fluent
performance, in which, no mean feat this, instrumental balances were always
finely judged. And from the fourth variation onwards, any prior reticence was
banished. There was, moreover, an excellent lilt to the final, ‘hunting’
variation. As an encore we heard another great aria-like slow movement, that to
the A major Violin Sonata, KV 526.

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Anniversaries, as we
are too frequently given occasion to reflect, are curious creatures. More
often than not, true opportunities are missed. For instance, the 2011
Liszt bicentenary offered, with a few exceptions, little more than a
greater number of performances of the same relatively small number of pieces.
Vast swathes of a fascinating if undoubtedly uneven œuvre went unexplored. This
year we enjoy and/or suffer Wagner, Verdi, and Britten. At least in England; it
is difficult to imagine that the Britten centenary is receiving quite the same
or perhaps any level of overkill elsewhere.

And that, of course, is the
problem: the ongoing parochialism of certain sections of English musical life –
which, to be fair, Britten himself tried, at least in some ways, to combat. Yet
the ridiculous insistence from ‘true believers’ that every Britten work is a
masterpiece does nothing to help the cause of a decent yet wildly overrated
composer. The
Royal Opera’s Gloriana, in as
estimable performance as it is likely to receive, showed beyond any doubt that Britten
was very capable of writing distinctly uninspired music. As for its ghastly libretto...

Yet for some, Britten is
treated as if he were the utmost in modernity. Why? There is parochialism pure and simple:
the UKIP tendency, people who write in to Proms controllers lamenting the lack
of wall-to-wall Arnold Bax and so forth. (For the rest of us it has never
occurred to value something because
it was English, British, or whatever; if anything, we probably tend to be a
little less indulgent upon our ‘own’.) But there is also another peculiarity of
English musical life, namely the prevalence of choral establishments. The
bizarrely skewed standpoint that results from the daily repertoire of most
Anglican foundations presents a world of
early music worthy of the name: Byrd, Tallis, Purcell, perhaps even a little
Palestrina and Monteverdi, though certainly not too much. However, as time goes
on, choirmasters take a peculiar historical detour from which they never
return, miring themselves and their charges in an otherwise unknown world of
Victoriana and post-Victoriana, apparently quite ignorant of core repertoire
that others would take for granted. The likes of Sir Hubert Parry – a favourite
of the Prince of Wales – rise to quasi-Wagnerian heights, whilst the twentieth
century consists not of Schoenberg and Stockhausen but the camp followers of Sir
Charles Stanford.

No wonder, then, that Britten
assumes a greater importance than he otherwise would: if a less consistent composer
than Elgar, he remains, perhaps even in Gloriana,
several cuts above most of the ‘English choral tradition’. In The Turn of the Screw, moreover, Britten
shows himself by any reasonable standards a true musical master. There are even
references and connections to some musical developments from ‘abroad’. The
problem of ‘abroad’ was of course part of the composer’s tragedy too: who knows
what so prodigiously talented a musician might have accomplished had he not
been thwarted in his desire to study with Berg? Perhaps he might then, however,
have put himself utterly beyond the pale for the English musical nationalists.
It would have been all the better for him if he had.

In a sense, Britten may have been
born too early – though Elgar had, admittedly, managed to deal with not
dissimilar problems rather more successfully. The next generation, that of the
Manchester School, found it far easier to consider itself one of composers
rather than ‘English composers’. There may be certain ‘English’ qualities and
interests, but no one would overemphasise their importance, and they would
doubtless go unnoticed by the devotees of Sir Edward Bairstow. (Don’t ask!)
Needless to say, the music of Birtwistle, Goehr, and Davies is eclipsed by the
likes of John Rutter’s pop-like chirpiness or, still worse, the soft-centred clusters
of fellow Anglophone, Eric Whitacre; or rather, it does, to the bemusement of
the rest of us, in a strange, almost hermetically-sealed world for which
Britten remains an example of music as ‘modern’ as would be seemly. Rescue him from the clammy clutches of his devotees, and we might yet have the opportunity of a truer re-assessment.

The Royal Opera offered a
strong performance and production, for the most part as excellent as we have
any right to expect, of what remains, alas, a very weak opera. Aldeburgh
fundamentalists, a highly vocal sect that is yet diminishing with age, will
maintain that Gloriana’s dreadful
initial reception was to be attributed to a philistine audience of coronation
dignitaries and the merely prejudiced. (Richard Jarman, General Director of the
Britten-Pears Foundation, writes in the programme of a composer ‘whose musical
conservatism was attacked by the avant garde in his lifetime but whose
reputation has outlived his critics.’ Well, he would, wouldn’t he?) The way
some speak of the debacle, one would think that a a masterpiece of the order of
Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus had been
slighted. It is certainly difficult to begrudge the opportunity to find out for
ourselves, in what is the first time since the brief 1954 revival that the
Royal Opera has staged the work, but the flip side of that opportunity proves
to be realisation that many of the criticisms levelled at the work in 1953 were
justified after all.

Though not really a criticism
of the work as such, it is extraordinary to think that anyone could have
thought this an appropriate subject for dedication and tribute to a new queen:
it would surely have been far better left to stand on its own feet, appearing a
few years later, after the composer had had more time to work on it. La clemenza di Tito, far and awaythe greatest of all coronation operas,
may have been written in breakneck time, even by Mozart’s standards, but,
wonderful conductor of Mozart though Britten was, he certainly lacked Mozart’s
combination of greatness and incredible facility. The opera is certainly not
helped by William Plomer’s dreadful libretto, laden down by unconvincing
archaisms and cringeworthy rhymes of which ‘duty’ and ‘beauty’ is far from the
worst offender; nor is it assisted by all too formulaic scene-by-scene
alternation between ‘public’ and ‘private’ realms, which encourages a
dramaturgy that barely advances, if indeed it does at all, beyond Verdi. (Half-hearted
applause greeted the end of each scene, whilst Richard Jones’s metatheatrical
production, about which more below, did its heroic to make the scene-changes of
interest.) Schiller or Boris Godunov
this conflict decidedly is not. Apart from Elizabeth I herself, and perhaps the
Earl of Essex, characters, such as they are, tend to be products of plot
situations rather than vice versa.

Yet even the manifold
dramatic weaknesses do not excuse the weakness of so much of the score itself. Even
the mild syncopations of the opening chorus sound shop-soiled: as if drawn from
a Britten manual of how to add a little ‘modernity’ without frightening away
the horses. Large sections of the orchestral writing seem little more than
padding. At their best, there is a kinship in vocal lines to Purcell; much of
the time, however, they veer between the merely nondescript and the
inappropriately Italianate (as in nineteenth-century Italianate, certainly
nothing contemporary). And if Norwich might not always be accepted as a heaving
metropolis, does it really deserve the tedium of the ‘masque’? (I could not
help but think of those dreadful shows the present Queen and Duke of Edinburgh
must sit through when on an official visit, doubtless longing to be taken as
quickly as possible to Balmoral or Newmarket.) Dramaturgically, there are signs
of hope there: at least Britten is doing something different. Rarely, however,
does his formulaic music rise to the occasion; it is actually more interesting
when it alludes most strongly to Tudor styles, though the ‘real thing’ would be
more interesting still. Matters were not helped by having the first and second
acts run together without an interval; it made for a very long time, scene
changes included, sitting through pretty insubstantial stuff.

That said, there could be no
gainsaying the commitment of the Royal Opera’s forces to presentation of the
work. If there were times when Paul Daniel might have sped things up a bit, one
did not need to know that he had conducted the score before, for Opera North,
to hear that he was fully in command of it. Likewise, the Orchestra of the
Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus, as ever excellently prepared by
Renato Balsadonna, responded with enthusiasm and sensitivity that lay almost
beyond the call of duty, regal or otherwise. Casting was of great strength, the
only real problem being Susan Bullock’s vocal fallibility in the title role;
without too much effort, though, one could accept that as reflecting the
fallibility of an ageing monarch. Otherwise, Toby Spence proved as fine an
advocate as the Earl of Essex could ever expect: ardent, sensitive, headstrong
as required. Mark Stone offered a finely-sung, equally finely-acted,
darker-hued foil as Lord Mountjoy. It was an especial joy to hear Patricia
Bardon’s true contralto, plaintive and full of tone, as the Countess of Essex, with
Kate Royal’s Penelope equally well sung, if less clear of diction. (The weird
outburst in the final scene, quite unmotivated by what little character
development has previously been offered, is certainly not her fault.) Smaller
roles such as Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Bayley), Sir Robert Cecil (Jeremy Carpenter), and Carol Rowlands's splendidly shrewish London Housewife
offered ample opportunity for care with words and music, however undeserving.
Likewise, Brindley Sherratt made the most of the tediously repetitive part for
the Blind Ballad-Singer; again, comparisons with a superficially similar role
in Boris Godunov are unfortunate, to
say the least.

Richard Jones pursued his
task as director with palpable relish. The production offers a metatheatrical
view of staging a 1953 celebration, framed by a small procession of
dignitaries. The idea might have been pushed further; as it stood, it did not
really do a great deal other than remind us when the work was written. Perhaps
that might have been more than the work could have taken, though Christopher Alden’s superb Midsummer Night’s Dream for ENO suggests bravery in staging may be the way forward for Britten’s
slighter operas. Designs by Ultz – just ‘Ultz’, presumably like ‘Jesus’, or
‘Voltaire’, his ‘mystery’ enhanced by the lack of a programme photograph – were
handsome, colourful, even witty. If we must have the 1950s on stage all the
time, this was a model of how to accomplish the task. Lucy Burge’s choreography
and the work of various actors and dancers were equally estimable. I could have
done without the cumbersome business of each scene being introduced by a gang
of children holding up letters to spell, ‘Nonesuch Palace’, ‘The City’, and so
on, but apparently some members of the audience found that side-splittingly
hilarious.

It is meet and right that opera
houses should grant the possibility to reassess works and indeed composers,
lest unfair historical verdicts go uncontested. The production earlier this
season of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable
is a case in point. Yet I suspect that the uninformed vitriol poured upon a
flawed yet intriguing grand opéra
will be matched this time around by calls of ‘disgracefully neglected
masterpiece’. We should all like to find another operatic masterpiece, but
wishing does not make it so; for that, we should do better to turn our
attention to the future, not least to the new work Covent Garden has
commissioned from George Benjamin and Martin Crimp. Works as different as The
Minotaur and Written on Skin, masterpieces both, suggest ways forward; yet it does us no
harm occasionally to reflect that creation of masterpieces may not only
alleviate but also be facilitated by the possibility of failure elsewhere.

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

My most recent blogpost
turned out to be my 1000th. No one can be more surprised about
having reached that milestone than I am; when I started out, just over six
years ago, I really had no idea what I was doing, barely knowing what a ‘blog’
was. I had made a pilgrimage to Berlin, for what still remains one of the most
extraordinary musical experiences of my life, the opportunity to hear in a
little over a week all of the Mahler symphonies, in performances by the
Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted by Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim. Whilst
there, it occurred to me that it would be a nice idea simply to record some of
my impressions. Having returned home to Cambridge – as home then was – I sent
my little report of those performances to a few interested friends. One of them
suggested that others, whom neither she nor I might know, might also be
interested to read an English-language report, and that setting up a blog would
be a way for them to reach it, should they wish. Being anything other than a
technologically-minded person, I was quite pleased with myself for managing to
do that without any help from anyone else. So unversed was I in the ways of
this new world, that it had never occurred to me that I should need a name for
the blog; so, when I was asked, I simply wrote the first thing that came into
my mind, doubtless a consequence of Boulez’s pre-eminence in those performances,
but not even realising that it was anything more than a user-name, such as I
had for e-mail. Though offering a tribute to the man I still regard in many ways as the
conscience of new music was far from unfitting, there was thus a great deal of
‘happenstance’ in the naming: not entirely unlike that of his wonderful
choral work, Cummings ist der Dichter
(not, incidentally, a work of which I have had any opportunity to review a
performance).

Perhaps, then, it would have
been especially fitting, had that final posting of the first thousand related
to Boulez in some way, but it did not, and I had no intention of writing
something just for the sake of such symmetry. (More to the point, I only
realised the day before that I was approaching my 1000th
posting!)However, were I not dealing
with Boulez, it would have been difficult to happen upon something more appropriate
than a memorial concert to Sir Colin Davis, whose performances, largely with
the LSO and the Royal Opera, consistently lit up my musical life until his
death earlier this year. Indeed, I recently noted that the
little tribute I wrote, immediately upon hearing of his passing, has been
the most-read item here. And now my 1001st is able to feature them
both.

In that spirit, I decided to
mark this coming of age by selecting twenty-one performances that have meant and,
in retrospect, continue to mean a great deal to me. (Not all of my postings
have been reviews, but I shall leave the others on one side for the moment.) It
would be meaningless to claim that they were my absolute ‘favourite’
performances during this period, for the competition would be far too fierce, and
in any case, musical performance does not or should not constitute a
competition. With all the necessary caveats, however, here is a selection of
those I especially wished to remember (in chronological order):

Gluck
remains perhaps the most scandalously neglected of all musical dramatists.
Barrie Kosky’s scintillating production of perhaps his finest opera offered a
standing rebuke to the silence from other houses.

Self-recommending,
one might think, but this concert with the Scharoun Ensemble and Barbara
Hannigan went beyond that to undoubted greatness; I doubt that any of the works
performed has ever received a superior performance.

The
premiere of Robert Carsen’s production at the Prinzregententheater offered one
of those rare occasions when everything worked together and proved so much more
than the sum of its considerable parts – especially to be valued in this of all
operas.

I
have been fortunate enough to see Stefan Herheim’s staging of Parsifal three times now, twice
conducted by Daniele Gatti. Here I have chosen the stunning experience of my
first encounter; it remains the case that I have seen no better production of
any opera, anywhere.

I
agonised over whether to include this Wigmore Hall concert, since part of its
memorability is ‘extra-musical’. However, the way in which musicians and music
rose above disruption proved both admirable in itself and a proper reminder
that there is no more ideological a construct than ‘absolute music’.

The
heroic efforts of English Touring Opera may often be overshadowed by London’s
permanent companies. The first performance of a masterpiece, however, stood in
stark contrast to some of the misfires offered both by Covent Garden and ENO (Anna Nicole, Miss Fortune, and above all, the execrable Two Boys...)

In
truth, I could have chosen any of the five ‘Pollini Project’ recitals given at
the Royal Festival Hall, in which our greatest living pianist performed works
from Bach to Boulez. How, though, not to single out transcendental accounts of
opp.109-11?

Not
that any of us in the know has ever doubted it, but here were a searing
performance and production, directed by Benedict Andrews, starring Tom Randle
and Pamela Helen Stephen, that demonstrated beyond doubt the towering greatness
of opera’s first titan.

Bernd
Alois Zimmermann’s masterpiece receiving its Salzburg premiere, showing,
amongst other things, that when the Vienna Philharmonic puts its mind to doing
so, it can be a great advocate for new music.

Goodness
knows how the Birmingham Opera Company under Graham Vick managed to give the
premiere of Stockhausen’s opera, helicopter quartet and all, let alone to do so
with such incredible success. This achievement arguably puts all of the others
mentioned here in the shade. Unforgettable!

The
first time around, I had had no doubt what a fine work this was, but it had not
quite knocked me for six as Gawain
had on only my second ever visit to the Royal Opera House. A superior conductor
made all the difference on the 2013 revival.